


you will find it different

by bee_bro



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Human, Elias Bouchard Centric, Elias Bouchard Character Study, Elias Bouchard's Lesbian Support Group, F/F, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Elias Bouchard, Peter Big, Slow Burn, groupchat shenanigans, i guess? idk its about him growing as a person, lets get this emotion, the lukases own a throwaway cafe they let peter keep
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24482290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_bro/pseuds/bee_bro
Summary: The Tundra is an enigmatically unwelcoming cafe, just as elusive in its function and patronage as its owner is silent.Elias Bouchard winds up there more times than he'd ever imagined possible.or, elias is a tired student with little going for him and peter's cafe and company is a strange yet necessary escape
Relationships: Agnes Montague/Jude Perry, Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Nikola Orsinov/Jane Prentiss
Comments: 38
Kudos: 98





	1. october

**Author's Note:**

> this was written in my notes app a few months ago. time to finish it, clean it up, and send it off into the wide webs

It's everyone's hobby to find reasons for their misfortune. Or pretend they'd found the reason (an astrology prognosis, a curse, a bad streak, hell: someone else) when all along, that damned reason had always been themselves. Elias does not like this fact.

Yet facts are all Elias is predisposed to process and therefore has to live with the absolute and unobstructed knowledge that he is the sole reason for Peter Lukas' newfound involvement in his life.

It is not Peter's fault. It is not the bloody universe's fault. It all boils down to Elias wanting hot chocolate at 2a.m. in October.

The nights are on their way to being depressingly cold. Elias absolutely hates it in the very moment. Hates himself for stepping foot outside so late, having just finished a twelve page research paper about the effects of almond farming on fish extinction in California. After a miserable few hours sitting in his room and clacking away at the keyboard, the fresh air is like a welcome jostle. Until it starts seeping into his bones and fingers and toes. 

He's just underdressed.

There's little places open right now that aren't alcohol oriented, and while Elias wouldn't spare a good martini, the prospect of getting up tomorrow for classes is downright dreadful. Minimal sleep he can work with. Minimal sleep and a hangover is where it gets trickier.

So Elias goes to the Tundra.

It's small, family-run. Probably used for money laundering. Opens at 7p.m. and closes at 6a.m. which is objectively wild but very convenient for Elias' night-time craving for something sweet.

He enters the establishment.

Two other patrons, huddled in a corner with their ankles touching and shoulders slumped, tired. The typical night schmuck. Elias approaches the counter where a tall, broad man of unidentifiable age lurks reading a book. Navy sweater, no apron, but Elias sees no other employees.

"I'd like a hot chocolate and any bakery if it's on sale." Elias addresses the man unceremoniously yet with the air of customer service politeness. Isn't rewarded any back. The guy at the counter just skirts his eyesight and sighs, punching whatever the fuck into the cash register and then sliding a calculator over to Elias with the amount of money needed typed up. Elias isn't going to bash on anyone possibly mute and honestly doesn't mind the lack of social interaction past midnight. Having paid, collected his drink and a stale carrot cake, he sits himself at one of the bar stools. The place doesn’t look like it serves alcohol but the bar island is sleek and a deep near-black, polished wood.

The establishment is designed with vague undertones of a boat (?), calm blues and a few paintings of ships. A bit gaudy but with obvious money behind it, and Elias knows he's noticing this only due to the very special kind of boredom this place carries.

He studies the swirls in his chocolate and then studies the guy behind the counter. He is, upon a slight closer inspection, maybe a bit younger than Elias. But on first glance, with a well-kept beard and his added height, the guy could be well into his thirties. No name tag.

The guy- the employee?- suddenly looks up at Elias as if burned, eyeline just to the side of Elias’ own, face scrunching up fast and hard in an expressive disgust Elias wasn't expecting from this silent, stoic man. The guy then taps a sign behind the counter- oh are you kidding?

It's a list of rules for patrons, and the specific one being pointed at reads:

NO EYE CONTACT

It's, Elias thinks later, a very bold fucking interior design move.

But at the moment it's extremely grating. He was just looking, wasn’t even trying to catch the guy’s- _waiter’s_?? eyes. Elias leaves after methodically packing away the carrot cake.

The Tundra is moved to his no-no list of bars and cafes. This list includes _KataKombs_ where he was pulled into a fight between some goth Elias recognized from his history courses and a wicked old man with a scared face but a mean shin kick. _Bee’s Buzz_ is also on there, in which Elias was unfortunately present when the far wall by the bar caved in under the weight of what looked like three bathtubs of maggots.

He admits the Tundra is not, comparatively, as horrible. The middle of the semester hits a good neutral mediocracy of workflow for a few weeks and Elias stays up late only to read on his own volition. Or to watch two-hour-long Avant Garde films of continuous single takes with no content whatsoever. It's relaxing.

Gertrude texts him at 12a.m. on the dot and he'd pretend he was asleep if it was anyone else.

_Shelley and I need to hang the night somewhere until he can go home._

Elias stares at it for a while, wondering how bluntly it's asking if they can stay over at his flat. And how blunt of a no he can give.

So instead of offering to house them - for whatever goddamn reason - he tells them that the Tundra's open. And that as long as you're polite or whatever, they'll be cool.

Gertrude doesn't reply and Elias spends the next hour and a half pretending to not be anxious about Gertrude turning up at his flat anyway. Her and Shelley have the worst mother-son dynamic which seems too real in how little she casually cares for him but how much mountains she's willing to move if he's in genuine trouble. Elias hopes to never be a mountain like that and keeps the fuck away from Shelley. All freshmen in general.

Gertrude texts him at 6a.m. with a cryptic and concise:

_Okay place. Food could use some work but service is endearing. I'll remember this._

He doesn't know if the last bit is supposed to be... reassuring?

The cacti that Elias takes reluctant care of aren't faring well with the cold. He drinks coffee in the morning and stares out his window, watching people on the street and wondering when the first snows will come. He starts recognizing figures, neighbors leaving for work, fellow students.

Elias politely denies Annabelle's worryingly persuasive text messages to join 'girls night in' for Halloween. The last day of October, his upstairs neighbors are throwing a party. He leaves his house with the faint echo of dancing feet still pounding around in his head.

The clubs crawl with people in costumes, waving glow sticks and threatening to pull Elias into a drunken kiss or ask who he's dressed as.

The Tundra is silent.

Now he's the only patron and approaches the counter unsurprised to see the same bearded man. He's wickedly pale, the deathbed kind, but his arms and shoulders are strong, healthy. Elias doesn't know what color his eyes are.

He orders coffee and doesn't try to speak outside of it, avoids looking at the employee all together. Doesn’t like calling him ‘the employee’. It feels too uncertain. He doesn’t have enough facts. Picks at his take-away paper cup with mild unease. He wonders why he doesn't like Halloween, does so for a very long time, sitting there in a strange, companionable silence. Even with half the cafe between them, having that employee exist is a strange sort of consolation.

Elias isn't one for boredom. Ends up eyeing the large collection of books behind the counter, virtually inaccessible. Challenges himself by reading the titles from that far away.

Minutes later, The Employee approaches him with a brownie and a book off the wall.

Up close, he's sinister but there are laugh lines in his face and Elias wanders what the hell from. The book is... an Encyclopedia. The brownie is stale.

Elias nods and sits quietly, slowly flipping. It's like hitting the 'random article' option on wikipedia late into the night. But tactile.

Later he adds tea to his order. The Employee brings it to him in a real mug this time and it's pleasantly hot against his palm. Elias remembered to dress warm because The Tundra - as the name suggests - does not seem to have a heating system.

Elias goes home at 4 a.m., a time he didn't expect to see looking back at him when checking his watch.

The Employee brings him a receipt and the brownie seems to be on the house. Elias doesn't say anything because.... it doesn't feel right. He doesn't leave a tip.

A cat by Elias' apartment building walks heavy with pregnancy. He looks at her with dejected wonder for a few moments, feeling the chill of early November creeping into his bones.

The apartment is vaguely quiet now, the rare shuffling from upstairs betraying the leftover partygoer or host. Elias settles into bed and notices his phone's stockfull of missed messages. The Tundra has shit signal, apparently.

He scrolls through the class group chats with little interest, avoids Gertrude's text, actually reads through the BaddestBitchesOnTheBlock group chat. Jane's sent poetry about her garden, Anabelle posts pictures of her Halloween getup, kitchen slathered in fake (?) spiderwebs.

Finally opens Gertrude's messages. They're asking him to transfer some works into the college archive. They're both TAs for the same professor, just different blocks. He's been a TA for longer but she's older and frankly the tad bit more ruthless. It's a strange quality for a scholar.

He shoots out a few emails. The next weeks will be the same. Vacantly, Elias realizes, there's a solid chance the rest of his _life_ will be the same. Waking up at the ass-crack of dawn and staring at the street slowly fill with people, going to lectures and trying to justify his aversion towards people he doesn't gain anything from, coming back home and taking care of his shitty plants that only really need him once a week for a spoonfool of water. He falls asleep in his shitty apartment, crowded with books. Not hard to accomplish, doesn't take a lot of books to make the small space feel even smaller. He wonders if one day the tomes will topple and bury him whole.


	2. harness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im back again! lets get this bread boys

Jane goes at her lunch with a healthy hunger, forking soggy, leftover rice into her mouth. Elias can vaguely smell its just-off whiff of fermentation. He can't judge a college student. He's eating crackers for lunch.

Jane tells them about her NaNoWriMo project and everyone groans about how she finds the time for it, to which Jane holds up her small, pale hands and wiggles her fingers: "I've got all the little helpers I need right here."

Elias remembers highschool and how his teacher'd leveled him with a very piercing gaze, one equally difficult to read, when Elias had turned in his whopping 30k novel composed entirely of back-and-forth letters. He'd perfected his victorian slang for that project and used it copiously throughout the exchanges. Looking back now, it was admittedly very boring to read. However, historical accuracy heavily outweighed his excuse of a plot in that case. He'd gotten an A and vague enough comments on it that Elias knew then, and knows now, that the teacher never read it in full.

Agnes deadpans, throwing it out there that she might try something too. Has enough 'childhood trauma to make any horror story funny.' Jude laughs a scalding heckle and asks if that's why she's such a clown. All in good humor. Elias refuses to accept food from Annabelle.

Gertrude passes him in the halls, eyes straight ahead, and Elias loves her for the work ethic and knows the professor made a right choice, taking her as a TA. Knows it but still doubts, doubts, doubts her intentions. There's people who take up the position for the nearly promised prestige above others students, some do it for the record on their pretty, perfect papers, other do it because it's the closest they can get to what calls: a position of power and access to knowledge.

Elias somehow knows she's none of those.

The widowed guy living across the hall from Elias has his nephew over and they're playing with a VR headset. Elias knows about this in excruciating detail because they won't shut up, laughter like claps of thunder. The man recounts how similar this is to his experience in skydiving.

Elias sits in his kitchen and eyes the racks of books. He has, regrettably, read each and every one. And what now? It's not like he can throw them away. He supposes donation is an option but there's something so powerful about... having them. They're his. No matter that they will scarcely be touched again. He just likes being sure that all this knowledge is undoubtfully his.

Tomes on history, personal accounts from nearly every war… Elias needs to read something new. He checks his watch: an hour before the Tundra opens.

He heads out.

It's no surprise the employee is the same. Elias wonders both how much he's paid to seemingly work all shift every shif- but then he remembers that he's been here a grand total of a few times. He can't know the man’s here every day. It can all be very spectacular coincidence.

The shop's a bit busier tonight. Nothing you could tell if you had a blindfold on: the place is still quiet. There's a young man writing in a beat-up cheap notebook, an old lady reading what might have been a diary. A lot of folk, solitary or not, keep the Tundra at a relative peace.

Elias approaches the counter and this time, instead of calling his order out loud, points at it on the menu. God does he want to know the backstory to this strange, strange place. The sole employee nods and Elias catches the crinkles of a smile on his face. It makes him look neither young nor older, just a bit more alive.

Elias takes a seat he's slowly realizing is becoming 'his'.

The lone waiter of the loneliest cafe Elias has ever visited brings him his coffee, a cheesecake, and – unprompted – a book. It's a thick tome on conspiracy theories. Not something Elias would usually pick out. Actually, not something Elias would _ever_ pick out. The eye on the cover stares at him, lash-less and vaguely inspired by the American dollar. It's enclosed in a triangle and Elias opens the book.

He spends the next three hours peacefully pouring over the pages, it's encyclopedic, listing short occurrences that are supposed to demonstrate the irrefutable existence of the World Order. It's oddly endearing. Believing everything's connected. He knows the authors didn't intend it as fiction but it's like a welcome dive away from the hard facts that litter his life. Everything is far too real at his flat and in the lectures and at the Bouchard family dinners.

This is funny aliens. Enticing.

The waiter brings him no other bakery but instead tea. A whole kettle of it- and the receipt never says so.

Elias leaves the book on the counter when he goes to leave, along with the money and the empty mugs. Walks out of the cafe trailed by the gentle sound of the waiter writing in a journal, coupled by the man at the table scribbling in his third notebook. It's like the whole world's telling stories.

There's the illusion of first snow. Elias lets the cold air steal his lungs, remembers how the winter of 2010 blew records away as the coldest in over a hundred years. He tries to remember where he'd been then. Doesn't want to.

It's late and Elias waits all the way til home to check his missed messages. Tova McHugh links to a true crime podcast in the group chat, to which Jane has sent a crying cat picture. Elias barely interacts but it's like reading a very entertaining drama unfold in real life. A sitcom he's one foot in, one foot out.

That's good. Today's everything is better. He plans to retire into his bed and spend a few hours upturning documents about the Tundra, finding out why and what it is. There's a text from Gertrude.

What horrible coincidence. Shelley's going to start working there. Or working _for_ them. She wants Elias to run a background check on the place.

Now, all of a sudden, he really does not want to do it at all.

Something about how she phrases it, Elias guesses that she already knows everything there is to know. That she's got all her facts in line to send Shelley off to work for the Tundra. _He can work with the family who owns it,_ she says, _partner with them_.

She says the place is run by the Lukases.

Elias shouldn't be surprised. Isn't. He'd always expected the place to be some coverup for rich people shenanigans, something or the other. He's heard of the Lukases, but only ever enough to know they're rich as hell. Who or where they came from, the public knows not.

He digs for hours. No one on facebook with the last name Lukas seems to be related to them. Most other social networks seem dead ended too. Like the family doesn't exist, and he's almost ready to believe it a pseudonym.

Finds a deactivated account of one Evan Lukas, in the features of whom Elias sees something akin the Tundra's one employee.

The last post on the page is a formal apology from Evan's friend or s.o. about his death.

Keeps digging. Newspaper headlines, newspaper headlines, building apartment complexes this, funding space exploration that. The perfect family and yet not a single face.

As Elias is regrettably on facebook, he sees the news of a book sale at the college library. Soon. Students donate books and get slips, for each slip you can go in and pick a book you want for free from the donated pile.

Elias looks up at his room. The fair is next month, and he dreads it with the knowledge he'll never sacrifice his books. And he'll hate himself for it because... He wants to? No, not really. What would he gain? Twenty books he isn’t interested in? Bother.

He texts Gertrude something inconclusive and goes to sleep.

Cram week weighs on them all. Several big assignments due Friday and so they no longer sit together at lunch, instead off working in their corners. Elias wonders what Jane's most likely insane girlfriend could possibly 'cram' for, being a theater engineer. But then again, Elias knows shit in the subject, for once, and has nothing to theorize on it. It's horrible, not knowing.

He goes home and needs to work, then when he’s done, he needs to research theater, just to better understand. The digital side of knowledge had never held the same appeal - he could've owned all his books digitally, but it'd be so detached, like only smelling food and never getting to taste it.

He goes home and sits down with coffee and understands that if he's done with this before 12a.m. he'll have plenty of time to read all about the logistics of theater rigs.

He exhales and sinks into the trance of the working student- finishes his paper on the fourth case in the book 'John Silence' by Algernon Blackwoodin: Secret Worship. It's a dreadful short story but he spins so much poetics about it, right in the direction he knows the teacher likes, that he's sure it'll land him a good amount of favoritism and a good grade.

He'd read the thing over and over again until his eyes grew tired and he'd spend time staring at the wall. Elias has a horrible knack for memorization. It'd come in handy many a time, but now as he submits his paper and sits back at the table, feeling oddly out of place in this oppressive stasis of knowledge, a piece from the book buzzes through him with the inexplicable air of meaning.

It’s that of meeting a strange man. The quote. A strange man who'd remained distanced and alone for the entire conversation, until uttering a single phrase. And only in response to the narrator's disbelief about the lack of timely standstill. Things change.

_Only once he said, looking up and speaking in a low voice that was not intended to be overheard but that evidently was overheard, "You will find it different."_

Elias leaves the flat. There's people on the streets ready for a good Friday and all Elias wants is to learn, learn, learn, something new, something so far out of his studies that it will feed him. He can no longer read twenty angles on the same thing. He walks into the Tundra, no longer for a drink, but for a book.

There's a bald woman at one of the tables, athletic and tanned, reading something on maritime travel. There's a familiar-looking goth in the corner, eating oatmeal cookies and flipping through an old, red book. There are people reading, people writing, and it is silent.

Elias stops in front of the menu.

He is not thirsty nor hungry, not like that. He blinks at the drinks menu and then, barely paying attention, points at something on the list, goes to sit down.

From the bar he can see the rules poster.

NO EYE CONTACT is only the third line.

NO ARSON

NO REAL NAMES

NO EYE CONTACT

NO PHONE NUMBERS

NO PERSONAL INFORMATION

Nothing mentioned about talking. So when the one lone employee that Elias now recognizes from a mile away approaches, shoulders broad and the beginnings of a smile on his lips, Elias, very, very quietly, asks:

Do you have anything on theater?

It feels so wrong to speak here.

The man nods, as always pale and somehow jolly in his decidedly emotionless movements. It's comfort, Elias realizes. This man is comfortable here.

He returns with a small bowl of dried berries and a heavily illustrated book on backstage production in major theatrical troupes.

Elias devours it in one sitting.

At some point throughout the night he catches glimpse of Shelley, carrying boxes of supplies from a maintenance door to another maintenance door to another. Elias has seen him around before, the kid's always been too tall to look comfortable in anything- especially since his go-to choice for every outfit looked inspired by the Newsies.

Now he walks by, wearing a tie-dye and very repulsive raspberry cuffed pants. They make Elias' eyes hurt to look at but... Shelley's smiling. He drops his eyes before Shelley can look over. After all, this place is one where eyes may rest safe without the need of recognition.

They don't acknowledge each other and Elias doubts Shelley will mention him to Gertrude at all. Elias is wearing whatever the hell he threw on before rushing outside, sitting amidst three empty mugs, and looking the least combed he'd ever let himself appear.

There's pins on Shelley's shirt, Elias notices as he passes back and forth with more boxes. The nonbinary flag, the pansexual one. One that has a little alien head on it and says 'I don't believe in humans'. If he hadn't seen Shelley around Gertrude so much, he wouldn't have recognized him at all, relaxed, wearing hell knows what, hair down.

He's sure. He's sure neither will bring this encounter up out there where the real world is nonfiction.

He reads about safety harnesses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:)


	3. bibliophilic tendencies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elias finds something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> peter would love this chapter because he doesn't have to star in it

Elias wakes up three minutes before his alarm. His mouth tastes like last night’s coffee and the dreadful realization he should’ve picked bloody _sleep_ over whatever it was that pulled him out into the streets. He lies on his back, waiting for his phone to ring and kickstart his routine. For now, it is only the sounds of a begrudgingly awake city and the distant crying of a cat. The phone goes off: Beethoven.

His French press is starting to get wobbly and Elias sets the coffee on the table with an ounce of suspicion, watchful that it doesn’t shake loose. He’s never awake enough to really appreciate the taste of it, but for all its stale bakery, the Tundra has significantly better coffee. He’ll need to find out what roast they use. _He_ uses? The man. The Employee. Him.

He wonders what his voice is like, somehow can’t exactly remember if he’s ever heard it. Maybe he has. Maybe he hasn’t. Elias almost nods off, waiting for it to brew.

The people in the streets are moving, walking, like a single mass, a flock of birds, carefully avoiding each other. He recognizes the resilient, practically immovable old lady that everyone side-steps as she makes her slow, tedious way through the busy street, hell knows why she’s up this early, but then again, old people really have nothing better to do. Especially at _her_ type of old. She lives in his building and one of her packages got delivered wrong once, brought to Elias’ door instead. A 7000 piece jigsaw of a metal bridge that Elias involuntarily recognized as having seen once in real life, around the Tottenham Marshes. The package came with no return address and wasn’t marked with an online delivery service’s logo. Blank and without a single hint as to who sent it and why- as at that time, Elias thought it was indeed addressed to him for inexplicable, possibly threatening reasons.

And yet, two days of deep anxiety about being watched later, Elias’ old, rickety neighbor with too much life behind her eyes climbed up the stairs and asked if he’d gotten any deliveries recently. He confessed to having the puzzle which she took gladly and invited him for tea. Elias refused on the grounds of ‘leaving for work in half an hour’ which she either believed or let slide. He didn’t want to drink anything she made. The woman reeked of raw meat, perhaps fresh from a market. Perhaps.

That was... God, that was two years and three months ago. Two years. Elias finishes his coffee, doesn’t think too much about the taste and the texture, and dresses for a cold day.

Annabelle begins a count down until New Year’s. Elias considers for once engaging in the group chat to tell her off about it. It’s barely November. But Nikola, Jude, and Tova are already getting on her ass about it, all the same, sending emojis, hate mail, and death threats, in that order. He waits for class to begin, watching the texts fly in as the girls hound down Annabelle for it, who’s only smug, really. Right on time as his professor enters, Jane sends a single sad emoji and immediately halts the conflict as everyone apologizes for raising hell. Elias turns his phone off.

Doesn’t turn it back on until lunch, as he sits at the table with Agnes, the only other one of their… group who’s currently in the right state of procrastination-related damage control to find time to eat. She eats with her hands and does it so casually that Elias, sitting there picking at cafeteria pasta with a fork, feels like he’s the one doing it wrong. She’s enigmatic, hair long and flowing, and dyed to look like it’d burn you if you got too close. She’s tall too. Elias watches her passively as she looks out at the crowd. He wonders if he’d crush on, ever, if not the over-work and the fucked up sleep schedule and the horrible state of his personal life. She’s beautiful, smart, sharpened by years of misfortune and finessed by years of independency. Elias looks at her and feels nothing.

The lectures after lunch are monotone in their passing, coming and going like the turn of a great clock’s hand, and Elias pinballs himself from hall to hall, until finally the clock’s hand finds him not as a student in a hall but as a TA, a position he favors much more. Gertrude’s leaving the room as he enters and they don’t nod at each other, don’t make eye contact. And that’s quite alright. Good, even, Elias thinks as he sets his briefcase down and removes his coat as to set it over his chair’s back. _‘School’s out’,_ yes ,yes, everyone goes home in a flurry of chatter through the campus. Elias remains with his desk of papers _._

The campus is both quieter with fewer people, and more crowded with the voices of those that remain, be it for drama or choir. Elias is to grade papers as a good, trustworthy assistant, and as he goes through the methodic routine of marking up a quiz. He listens to the muted, ghostly echoes of their music room’s calliope, the transportation he had to help oversee, as the thing was dragged from the music department to the theater one in preparation for the upcoming winter play. The two jocks moving it – identical twins in face but somehow not in name, had been careful with the instrument, but had somehow managed to move it to not only the wrong room, but the wrong floor.

Elias had been berating them for the delay, when a manic-looking Nikola manifested in the hallway and patted him on the shoulder, leaning in far too close, he could smell her stage make up, “They’re transfer students. Ease up on the posh vocabulary.”

She told them new instructions in Russian and moved on. Elias doesn’t know how he got roped into the moving process at all. He wasn’t with music. He wasn’t with drama. Elias was with the good, quiet, history department. Literature. He grades papers now, enjoys the emptiness of the room and the way all other sound – calliope in its place included – is filtered. Through walls and stacks of papers. There is commotion in the world and he will not take part. He will see if number 23 is marked B or C and he will move on.

Elias finds papers that do not belong to him.

More specifically, a folder. Nonobtrusive, simple. Unfamiliar.

It sits buried in a good two weeks’ worth of assignments. Elias finds it by chance, looking for extra staples. It’s kept closed with an adjacent elastic and holds a hefty stack of papers that Elias, without a second thought as to his personal safety, removes. The underlying fear of understanding what this is is far from enough to deter him as he leafs through documents not meant for anyone but the owner.

He barely has to wonder. This is Gertrude’s.

Page after page, a collage of scanned documents, handwritten notes, printed excerpts and images, here and there a polaroid photo. The history of burnings in London. Notre Damme. Grenfell Tower. King’s Cross. Notes on how to make a molotov. Notes on how to rig a system of explosives. Newspaper clippings, near St George Street on October 25th, man charged with arson with disregard for human life, set fire to a garage costing 80 thousand in repercussions. Tennant Avenue, June 26th, 18 year old man sets fire to a school bus, as far as Elias can tell, an empty one. Unrelated to another ambiguous vehicle fire only an hour later at Delaware and Horace Streets. Seven more articles after this, all similar in content, some definitely more dated and worn, re-stapled multiple times. Labeled at the corners with a number and letter system he doesn’t see any logic behind. Elias recognizes Gertrude’s handwriting, old-fashioned and barely legible to anyone but her. There are two more styles there, footnotes added by others: a spindly, round kind of writing and then a fast, sharp chicken-scratch. Elias struggles to read Gertrude’s and the latter’s notes at all while the curving, spiraling letters done in gel pen spell out details on further research. Elias drones out the whine of the calliope, eyes racing across words he’s trying to put into context.

Into the context of professional, cold, reserved Gertrude, the Gertrude that you can’t really pin an age on, the one that drags a well-combed, monotone freshman around with her, Shelley, the one- the Gertrude who lives off-campus near the local park- the calliope is too loud to ignore now, Elias bores his eyes into the papers – the park that had an arson attempt just this year.

Someone’d burned half the clearing out in a surprisingly neat circle, set fire to the grass, and it’s a miracle the birches lining it didn’t catch. The police reported foreign objects found on the scene, bottles popped from heat and charred, indistinguishable photographs. Case open. The park by Gertrude’s flat.

Elias sets the folder down. Breathes at a strange pace.

He needs to retain all of this. Needs to know.

He realizes he’s breathing in pace with the calliope. Stops and tries to desynchronize, collects the folder, stands up, and calmly makes his way to the copy room. It’s all about how people perceive you. If you are calm, average, no eyes will turn upon one’s gait.

He passes no one in the halls. The after-hours are empty but for the music.

The copy machine whirs out replicas of his accidental discovery and Elias replaces any disturbed papers as they were, lest Gertrude set her sights on him as a point for eradication. Even before this development, Elias had been subconsciously aware of her potential. Now? He doesn’t want to be scared. She knows where he lives. He packs the copies away into his briefcase. The click of its lid seals the danger of written word off from his direct attention and things ease up, the air becomes lighter, Elias tries to stop breathing in pace with the theater rehearsal’s track. He can finish grading later, he wants to go home and think-no, he can’t afford to... If Gertrude somehow _knows_ her papers have been found, whatever they mean, and then learns that Elias left the campus in a hurry… What will she think? Her head is not one he’s been able to get into. The Gertrude he knows is only what she lets him see and he is _so_ aware of the fact. He needs to carry on as if nothing has transpired.

Elias finishes marking the dumb, now in retrospect meaningless, quizzes. It takes another hour, chiselled out by the lecture hall’s ticking clock that, now having noticed, Elias cannot unhear. The calliope mixes with the inevitable draining of time and Elias marks number 12 wrong. Absently. He’s looking at a multiple-choice test and he’s seeing the news headline, _33-year-old woman charged in alleged arson in parking lot of east London fast food restaurant,_ why does he remember it word for word? October 16th. Why does he remember?

Someone claps him on the shoulder and Elias almost snaps the pen he's holding.

“They should just make you a professor,” Nikola stands over him, a silent intruder – he looks down – yes, wearing only socks, no shoes. She’s decked out in a ringmaster’s set, face nearly porcelain with precise, sharp make-up, grinning seamlessly.

“I’m not yet qualified.” He turns back to his work, hoping she’d leave. Falsely. Nikola only proceeds to sit on his desk, crossing her legs. To her belt is strapped a riding crop and Elias wonders about the safety measures and regulations concerning potentially harmful objects. On second thought, anything Nikola possesses can be deemed potentially harmful. You never know. She hands him a lollipop.

“Saw the lights on in here, thought I’d drop in. They were giving candy out and I don’t like apple flavor.”

“…Thank you.” Elias stares at the wrapped candy in hand for a moment before pocketing it, “Will that be all?”

“It may not be all but it sure is enough,” she winks like it’s supposed to mean something, and Elias suddenly wonders if she somehow knows what rests within his briefcase. But Nikola ruffles his hair and leaves, equally silent, and Elias realizes the calliope had stopped playing a long time ago.

His hair is ruined, the day’s long. Two more quizzes.

Elias leaves the building to an unpleasant, chunky rain. Most of the campus lights are out already and he walks home, clutching the briefcase to his chest, running through a checklist of all possible precautions. CCTV in the halls. No… And he did put all the original papers back in place. Nothing on his person screams _biblioklept_. Right? His hair is unsettled but that’s no indication of anything, unless you know Elias personally. And no one does. His hands aren’t marred with blood- he doesn’t know why that flashes across his mind, like infringing on Gertrude’s files had been a bloody murder of privacy. His coat is in shape.

He remembers the lollipop in his pocket.

In his decidedly expensive cashmere coat pocket, the only gift from his family he’d kept. He cannot have that melting in there.

Elias stops under an overhang to lower his umbrella and retrieve the offending candy. It’s luckily intact, luckily unaffected by the warmth of his coat, and Elias thinks, fuck it, and unwraps it, peeling the green wrap off and looking around dejectedly for a bin before shoving it back into his coat. He sets back out on his way, and when he sticks the lollipop into his mouth, making sure to keep his umbrella centered and briefcase from getting wet, Elias realizes the candy’s plastic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you once more for all the wonderful comments everyone it really brightens up my day that this dreadful elias-is-miserable-for-8k story is pleasant

**Author's Note:**

> ;0 im on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/22ratonthestreet)


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